About

Photo credit: H Romero

Pelenakeke (Keke) Brown is a multi-disciplinary artist based in New York City. Her practice includes drawing, writing, storytelling and movement. All her work is rooted within the Samoan concept of the ‘va’ or 'in-between space.’ As a New Zealand born, afakasi Samoan, immigrant, disabled woman she is interested in the in-between spaces we each inhabit.

She is a 2018 Create Change Fellow with the Laundromat Project and appointed to Dance/NYC's Immigrant Artists Initiative 2017-18, offering an immigrant dancer's perspective. Pelenakeke is a founding member of Touch Compass, New Zealand's first mixed-ability dance company.

Pelenakeke is a 2016 NYFA Immigrant Artist Program alumni. She has attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center (VT), Denniston Hill (NY) and Ana Pekapeka Studio (NZ). Her non-fiction creative work has been published in the James Franco Review, Movement Research Journal, TheHawaii Review, and in the Apogee Journal's, Indigenous #NoDAPL special edition.

She has attended the National Academy School of Fine Art, Studio Intensive Program, NY and received a BA in English literature and Pacific Studies, focusing on art and literature by indigenous people as well as post colonial theory, from Auckland University, NZ. Currently she is the Assistant Director of Culture Push, a NYC based non-profit arts organization.